The A-Z: (Educational Showcases) series is an art project developed since 2006. Over this time Tobis has managed to gather and describe over five hundred photographs. The project is still continuing, and enjoys growing popularity.
This ever-expanding photography series is something like an attempt to describe the world – naming phenomena and defining reality. Tobis discovered the form and format through the first three publications of Bildwörterbuch Deutsch und Polnisch – an illustrated Polish-German dictionary from the 1950s. The entries pertaining to the East German reality of the 1950s and 60s are paired with illustrations: photographs of Polish reality taken by the artist. None of these have been doctored using graphics programs. The juxtapositions of the entries and the pictures are disarming, often humorous or subversively ironic – they “work” not only as apt illustrations, but also as visual rebuses. The photographs gathered by Tobis alone document the transformations in the landscape and the mindset of Poland over the last decade.